Claims Of Obama Spending Binge False

[Texas Contrarian]

Originally Posted by Doove

...And frankly, with your idiotic rambling nonsense about me...

LOL!

You spent most of your posts attacking me, and you think I was the one posting idiotic rambling? And you called me a hypocrtite? Now that's rich!

You got caught posting something stupid that you don't understand and won't defend, and you just can't stand being called on it. So you lash out in the only way you know how. Get back on topic or STFU.

Now back to regularly scheduled programming:

Originally Posted by nevergaveitathought

...they truly harm the poorest and least able among us by wasting our bounty that could be so better used...

Nevergaveitathought hit upon a very important point that's been completely ignored by most of the "mainstream media" myrmidons.

Large-scale deficit spending generally has to be accommodated and enabled by loose central bank policies such as quantitative easing (QE), essentially a bond-buying program. The goal is to reflate housing prices and push hoarded dollars into risk assets. The problem is that once those dollars go out the door, it's hard to predict where they'll go. Easy-money policies tend to stimulate unproductive speculation, rent-seeking, and malinvestment. In my opinion, that accounts for a lot of what went wrong in the 1970s.

Of course, a number of factors influence the prices of oil and food commodities, but to a great extent price spikes are easy money/weak dollar phenomena. You've seen what's happened to food prices over the last few years. And in the strong-dollar days of the late 1990s, oil prices were in the teens. Even with the recent declines, they're still in the high 80s.

Hard-pressed households near or below the median income level are struggling more so than they have in many years, and I'm afraid they will continue to do so for a long time to come.

[Doove]

Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

LOL!

You spent most of your posts attacking me, and you think I was the one posting idiotic rambling? And you called me a hypocrtite? Now that's rich!

Post #64. Check it out and learn something.

You got caught posting something stupid that you don't understand and won't defend, and you just can't stand being called on it.

I made my point and you came back with.....nothing. So what's there to defend?

So you lash out in the only way you know how.

It's not the only way i know how. It just happens to be the most entertaining.

Get back on topic or STFU.

Get back on topic he says.

[IIFFOFRDB]

They just don't make good trolls anymore. The mold got broke when Dooove crawled out of Momma trolls snatch.....

[Texas Contrarian]

Originally Posted by Doove

I made my point and you came back with.....nothing. So what's there to defend?

You made no point; it was nothing but an incoherent non sequitur. You claimed in post #12 (in that other thread) that you debunked a future statement made by me! That's stupid even by your standards. In fact, I'll post a reply in that other thread just so that you won't remain confused.

I tried to keep the thread on topic by asking you to defend our fiscal policy. You simply responded with your usual collection of snarky comments. Who do you think is going to pay for the permanently higher level of spending Obama has sought to bring about? Do you think we're going to pay for it with higher taxes limited to the hated "rich?" (You wish.)

If you do, you're living in a fantasy world. (But everyone already knew that!)

[nevergaveitathought]

Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

Nevergaveitathought hit upon a very important point

its solely because i'm brilliant

[Doove]

Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

You made no point; it was nothing but an incoherent non sequitur. You claimed in post #12 (in that other thread) that you debunked a future statement made by me! That's stupid even by your standards.

Apparently subtlety is a bit over your head. When i said you responded with "nothing", what i meant was that you responded with nothing relevant that refuted my points. In other words, you followed up my post #12 with an incoherent non-sequitur.

I tried to keep the thread on topic by asking you to defend our fiscal policy. You simply responded with your usual collection of snarky comments. Who do you think is going to pay for the permanently higher level of spending Obama has sought to bring about? Do you think we're going to pay for it with higher taxes limited to the hated "rich?" (You wish.)

If you do, you're living in a fantasy world. (But everyone already knew that!)

I believe i'm on record as stating that i believe taxes should probably be raised on everybody - not just the rich.

More evidence that you just have no idea where i'm coming from.

[Texas Contrarian]

Originally Posted by Doove

Apparently subtlety is a bit over your head. When i said you responded with "nothing", what i meant was that you responded with nothing relevant that refuted my points. In other words, you followed up my post #12 with an incoherent non-sequitur.

Bullshit!

This whole issue is way over Doove's head. He obviously doesn't understand what I said in post #14 in that other thread. But if he doesn't believe me, he should just read the well-known "fact checker" column in The Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...h6nU_blog.html

This should really be pretty easy to understand, even for Doove. Peacetime spending in FY2009 jumped by an unprecedentedly large amount as a result of several emergency programs designed to combat the financial crisis, including the TARP and that ineffective collection of political payoffs known as the "stimulus package."

Big, entrenched increases in government spending retard prospects for sustained economic growth; they do not "stimulate" them. Just look how sick the economy is today. From an economic point of view, we're working on our second consecutive "lost decade."

[WTF]

CaptainMidnight,

The system is fucked up. It has nothing to do with either Obama or even Bush. ...you know that.The Fed Chairman runs things. You know that too.

Reagan hired Greenspan and it has been nothing but one big bubble after another, with the investment banks making money on the way up and down.

[Doove]

Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

From an economic point of view, we're working on our second consecutive "lost decade."

That'll happen when you spend 10X as much on defense as the 2nd highest country.

[Texas Contrarian]

Originally Posted by Doove

That'll happen when you spend 10X as much on defense as the 2nd highest country.

For the record, it's actually less than 5X what the country with the 2nd highest military budget (China) spends. Could we spend substantially less without compromising national security? I think so, and favor reductions in every area possible -- cutting politically-created and supported fat rather than muscle. But let's get real here. Defense spending is not the primary component of our debt trajectory. You could slash the military budget by 50% and we'd still have annual budget deficits of approximately $1 trillion.

Originally Posted by WTF

The system is fucked up. It has nothing to do with either Obama or even Bush. ...you know that.The Fed Chairman runs things. You know that too.

Actually, I think it has rather a lot to do with both Obama and Bush, both of whom have been among the most fiscally irresponsible presidents in history. (In fact, I think they are the two most irresponsible presidents in history.) The Federal Reserve does not compel ambitious, vote-buying politicians to break the bank.

However...

The Fed certainly enables the fiscal authorities to run large budget deficits! Without the possibility of all that money-pumping and outright debt monetization, large-scale deficit spending would come to a screeching halt.

And although Greenspan certainly accelerated the bubble-pumping in the early '00s, the problem really started with Nixon and the Burns Fed three decades earlier. Nixon, of course, closed the gold window in 1971 so that the dollar could float. In his State of the Union address that same year, he also called on congress to pass an "expansionary budget", saying that a "full employment" budget would bring about full employment in the economy. (Yes, he actually said that!) Everyone knows how well that worked.

Nixon also was reported to have told a few insiders that the job of the Fed Chairman is to do what the president tells him to do. Indeed, Arthur Burns loved to socialize at the White House and did pretty much just that.

In the 1950s and '60s, we had a Fed chairman (Bill Martin) who said that his job was to "take away the punch bowl just as the party gets going."

Back in those days, people often used the expression "as sound as a dollar."

You don't hear than one so often nowadays.